[CQ-Contest] Contesting from the basement

[David A. Pruett]

At 10:35 PM 7/22/03 -0500, Kelly Taylor wrote:
>One idea that I've had but never checked out, both from a NEC standpoint 
>and a lightning-protection standpoint, is drilling the requisite hole in 
>the concrete floor (or wood floor, if you're so lucky) and driving a rod 
>into the ground below the basement and sealing it back up with concrete 
>(or not, if you have a framed wood floor). I'm not sure what impact that 
>would have on your weeping tile installation or if it would be 
>recommendable from a water-intrusion standpoint, but it was an idea.

I've done that at K8CC.  The shack is approximately 12'x18' with four main 
operating tables.  At each corner of the room, I drilled completely through 
the concrete floor and installed an 8' guy rod.  Each grounds for each 
table go to the nearest ground rod.  This is for a 
multi-op/multi-transmitter setup, so the multiple grounds don't create 
ground loops.  When doing single-op with SO2R (you knew I'd get that in 
there somewhere :-)) all the gear in use is on one desk, working to a 
single ground.

I've never had water entry problems with these ground rods.  My property 
has good natural drainage.  Also, I stayed away from the weep drains.

One nice thing about operating from the basement is that I believe there 
are less problems from RF getting into the equipment.  I've never had RF in 
the stack on HF except once when I had a low 80M dipole over the house.  My 
nearest tower is 75' away, and I have no problem with computer noise either.

Dave/K8CC